Video games, pen&paper RPGs and other nerdery

State of the Kadomi, Legion Edition

Yeah, I know, this blog seems pretty much deserted all the time. However, whenever I have time off work, I feel like blogging. 2016 wasn’t a great year, and 2017 didn’t start much better, but let’s all keep hanging in there! To revive this blog, I had originally planned to bring my friend Rach in to help me fill this blog with content, but it didn’t pan out yet, and might not at all, but we’ll see.

I’ll try to give an overview of what’s all going on with me, in my pursuits of nerdery. I’ll post throughout my vacation week to get back into the habit of writing. I have tons of stuff to write about: My Pathfinder games, which seem particularly prone to player drama; my fun Numenera campaign; other video games I am playing; my attempts at losing weight and getting in shape while running away from zombies; and last year’s gamecation.

MMOs, aka WoW Legion

You know, I keep saying it’s over, and I am done with MMOs, and then I keep going back. I really thought after my extended into FFXIV, that was it. Zero desire. I scoffed at people hanging in there through Warlords of Draenor, which I still consider the worst WoW expansion to date. I had no interest in Legion. About two weeks before Legion was released, I spent gold on a WoW token, and have been playing through tokens ever since. As far as expansions go, Legion is great. There’s tons of content for every sort of player, and they’re really adding new content at the speed of light compared to other expansions. I pretty much expect them to fizzle out eventually, but that time, it’s not here yet.

When I went back to Legion, I piddled around with choosing who would be my main this expansion. Ever since giving up my US account, I switch mains every expansion. My former main Yatalai, frost DK, didn’t appeal. I didn’t want to heal, and never liked retribution, so my WoD main Yacoran the paladin was out. I speed-leveled a mage to 100 through invasions and decided that for the first time since vanilla, I would be ranged DPS again. That plan died at level 103 after my first dungeon. I don’t know how other ranged do it, but with tab-target changes I find switching targets as ranged so stressful and so unfun that I sent my mage to live in her garrison ever since, making hexcloth.

From Stormstrikes to healing

Instead, I boosted a shaman from 60 to 100, and was ready to rock it as enhancement. Enhancement was great fun, but it never fully clicked. I never lived up to my full DPS potential and I get antsy and frustrated when I am only a middling to low DPS. She also got one of the worst legendaries and I just wasn’t happy. I toyed with the idea of going full resto but my guild had a bunch of healers, so I didn’t find my niche there.

For 7.1.5 we had some changes in the raid line-up. Two healers wanted to go DPS, and I saw a chance at bringing back my paladin, who I had slowly leveled as holy/prot. I worked hard at gearing him for Nighthold, and since release of that raid have been healing in there. My guild is currently 8/10 normal and I truly, deeply, madly love my paladin’s healing style. Our godly resto shaman raid healer wasn’t there for the last raid, and so I was able to kick some ass, getting 97th percentile for my ilevel on Spellblade. That made me very happy.

I decided I’d give him a purple mog, but have no purple appearance for the artifact, QQ.

How about them legendaries?

Of course I also have complaints about Legion. For one, the Legendary system is total crap. In theory, I find it super-cool that everyone can get powerful items, but they don’t feel legendary to me. Ragnaros’ hammer or Thunderfury, the Twin-Blades of Azzinoth, those are legendary items. The Legion legendaries are particularly high ilevel epic items with an extra ability. On top of that there’s a vast disparity between items, they’re so very poorly balanced. You can’t make items that increase DPS by 10% and at the same time offer items that only have utility, like the faster run speed plate boots.

Maybe I wouldn’t be so bitter if I had ever gotten one of the BiS legendaries. I got nothing but legendaries that seem to be particularly common: Aggramar’s Stride, Prydaz (which is at least super-useful if not performance enhancing) or Sephuz on my shaman. The latter actually made me angry when I received it. I think you’re supposed to be excited and happy when you get a legendary item, but here I got the pre-buff Sephuz, a big DPS loss to my current rings, with an ability that would not do anything for me in raids or in solo play. I think that was the day I decided I was done with my shaman.

Why must challenge equal speed?

Furthermore, I don’t care for the emphasis on challenge=speed. I run m+ dungeons, because it’s a great way to gain Artifact Power and a nice item from the weekly chest, but I haven’t done tons of m+, or particularly challenging ones, my high score being a successful +8. My paladin also tanks dungeons, and I have never been a speed rush tank, ever. I felt excited that I cleared Karazhan last week in 90 minutes, that was super speedy for me.

Preferably, I would rather see challenge more like Karazhan, and kinda dread that they’re adding m+ mode for it in 7.2. But no one is listening to me, and so it’s all speed speed speed. I think the emphasis on speed makes pugging even worse because everyone plays in that way all the time now. M+ dungeons make me feel old and slow. Anyone remember TBC heroics? Yeah, that was more my speed.

All in all, I am super-happy with Legion, World Quests are not boring yet, and think the 7.2 content sounds spiffy.